Contemporary user equipments, such as mobile communications terminals, are becoming more and more advanced and the amount of data that is handled and transmitted or received by a mobile communications terminal is growing. Users are thus becoming more and more dependent on establishing a data connection quickly without experiencing inactive periods, which are both time-consuming and also stressful.
In the 3GPP WCDMA RRC Connection Establishment procedure a UE requests the network to establish a connection between the UE and the network for the purpose of service handling. In some situations the network may be congested and therefore rejects the RRC connection establishment request. According to the 3GPP specification the UE shall then, if the network indicates so, wait a specified time before a new attempt to request a connection to the network is made by the UE. The reject message received from the network may also include information to redirect the UE to another WCDMA frequency or another RAT (Radio Access Technology).
From the user perspective this situation, where the UE has to wait before retrying the connection establishment request, will be perceived as a “hanging” situation. Within the same connection establishment sequence the UE shall re-attempt the connection request up to 7 times, each with a wait time period of up to 15 seconds. This means that the hanging situation in a worst case scenario (from an RRC perspective) could last for 100 seconds.
There is thus a need for an improved manner of establishing a connection when the required network returns a congestion or other reject message in response to a request to establish a connection.